The Messy, Complicated, Living Truths of 2024

I’ll never forget the first day of Journalism 101 during my freshman year of college. My classmates and I were draped in expectation, carrying the weight of everything we thought we knew. We sat at the lab table—bright-eyed, hopeful, practically vibrating with the energy of a generation convinced it can change the world with its words. We believed in truth. We believed in justice. We believed we could ace this course.?

Then our professor entered the room, looked at us over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses, and unceremoniously dismantled everything we held dear. "Objectivity?" he said, his voice heavy with the gravity of someone delivering bad news. "Impossible." The word landed like a stone in the still water of our optimism. And then the next blow: "Including every side of a story? Inconceivable."

It felt like a betrayal, like learning the rules of the game we were so eager to play were rigged from the start. But it was also thrilling in a way—this idea that the truth wasn’t some pristine thing we could hold up to the light, but something messy, complicated, alive.

Two decades later, I find myself reflecting on that moment and the media landscape that now feels less like a well-trodden map and more like an infinite, tangled web of stories, conjecture, and heated debates—sometimes healthy and thought-provoking, other times loaded with vitriol or disregard for other people's experiences. Through the trending headlines that flash across my screen and the endless scroll of content countless consumers have grown addicted to, lives a voracious appetite for information, devoured with equal parts cynicism, curiosity, and the will to contribute to the conversation.?

Behind Every Story

Behind every story lies a multitude of other stories, acute angles, and voices that go unheard. From the complex and polarized social media responses ignited by the tragic death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, allegedly at the hands of Luigi Mangione, to a growing number of people now speaking out in support of Blake Lively, who is taking legal action in response to alleged sexual harassment and a subsequent smear campaign led by her "It Ends With Us" co-star and director, Justin Baldoni, the ripple effect of headline-making stories appears to go wider and deeper with every click.?

In addition to emphasizing our messiness and aliveness, current events and headlines from 2024 showed us that a collective quest to support humanity and creation still exists. Here are some stories from the year exhibiting hope and openness to infinite truths. I hope to see more stories with a similar sentiment in 2025.?

The Israeli and Palestinian Women Calling for Peace - Time

Excerpt:?On Oct. 4, 2023, some 1,500 Israeli and Palestinian women descended on Jerusalem and the shores of the Dead Sea. Wielding blue and yellow flags representing two different grassroots peace organizations, they gathered to demand an end to the “cycle of bloodshed” consuming their communities and for their respective leaders to return to the negotiating table to secure a nonviolent resolution to their decades-long conflict. “This is a historic partnership of two women’s movements,” said Yael Admi, a co-founder and leader of the Israeli movement Women Wage Peace. She referred to the alliance with the Palestinian organization Women of the Sun, whose founder and director Reem Hajajreh added, “We started out as a movement with a few lone women and now we are thousands. We no longer take the back seat.”

The Solar Eclipse of 2024 - SciTechDaily

The solar eclipse of April 8, 2024, had a profound impact on communities across North America, influencing local economies, infrastructure, and social dynamics. The path of totality traversed several states, attracting millions of visitors and providing a significant boost to local economies. Beyond the economic and infrastructural aspects, the eclipse served as a moment of awe and reflection.

The eclipse provided a unique opportunity for scientific research and public education. NASA supported numerous projects to observe the eclipse's effects on the sun's corona, Earth's atmosphere, and radio communications. Citizen scientists and educational institutions participated in data collection, enhancing public understanding of astronomical phenomena and inspiring future generations of scientists

Communities gathered in parks, schools, and public spaces to witness the celestial event, strengthening social bonds and creating shared memories. The experience highlighted the human desire to connect with natural phenomena and with each other, transcending everyday routines.

The 2024 Good Tech Awards - New York Times

Excerpt: Few groups this year were more widely praised among A.I. insiders than Epoch AI, a small nonprofit research organization whose work has helped lawmakers, academics and the public at large understand what’s happening in A.I.

Epoch AI was started in 2022 and is run today by Jaime Sevilla, a 28-year-old Spanish A.I. researcher who believes that the industry needs better data about its own trends and trajectories. The firm maintains public databases of A.I. models and A.I. hardware, and publishes research on A.I. trends, including an influential report this year about whether A.I. models can continue to grow at their current pace. (Epoch AI concluded they most likely could until 2030.) It also develops its own tests to gauge the capabilities of leading A.I. models, such as the FrontierMath benchmark, which tests advanced mathematical skill.

To make good decisions about A.I., we need an accurate picture of the technology’s progress, and Epoch AI’s work has brought much-needed rigor and empiricism to an industry that often runs on hype and vibes.

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There are more where these stories came from, and there will be new tales of triumph and togetherness in 2025. Until then, wishing you all a happy New Year. To the next chapter of messy, complicated, living truths and beyond!